Why Tekken should not be 'dumbed down'

Original-Gamer.com: "IPlayWinner's Darry Huskey wrote a piece for Shoryuken.com(it was removed today) about the need for Namco to look at "dumbing down" the Tekken franchise. His opinion is that right now the Tekken series doesn't have room for growth, and the game takes far too long for most people to master due to the sheer amount of depth found within. While his concern is sound, by stating that Tekken Tag Tournament 2 will not be as successful as Street Fighter or Marvel vs. Capcom series, he is not grasping what Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is about, as well as understanding the ramifications of "dumbing" a game down."

Well they "dumbed down" Soul Calibur 5, and we saw how that went. Critically received worse and sold barely half as much as its predecessor, and competitive players have very little interest in the title.

Tekken is currently the most played 3d fighting game series worldwide; it doesn't need to change its formula to adapt to a new audience. I believe that if you want to change the mechanics of a game, fighting or not, do it for the sake of expanding its core elements and making it better, not for trying to appeal to a new audience. This is a trend that we're all too familiar with this generation and sadly doesn't seem to be in regress.

Call it traditionalism if you must, but it isn't such a bad thing if a developer works hard to add quality to games through creativity and by what actually works to its benefit.

"Well they "dumbed down" Soul Calibur 5, and we saw how that went. Critically received worse and sold barely half as much as its predecessor, and competitive players have very little interest in the title"

I spent years mastering SC4, had over 10,000 fights online and I was hyped for SC5. Then i realised the movesets had been reduced, super moves had been added. I stuck with it for a month before coming to the conclusion they had ruined it.

I can see why they may want to do it but it can drive people away from a series as well as attract new people. MVC3 was a huge disappointment for me when I realised it uses like 3-4 buttons. Whatever happened to the 6 button layout of the original. Its changes like this that really p*ss me off.

I have a huge amount of respect for Harada and his team. It must be extremely hard to add new characters/ moves/ mechanic without breaking the balance of the whole game. Not just that, but they're sticking to their core audience despite of the direction the industry is currently heading. These kind of developers deserve our money.